


What Dreams May Come

by Xela



Category: Eureka
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-08
Updated: 2011-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-14 13:24:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xela/pseuds/Xela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do when your dreams seem better than reality?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Dreams May Come

He remembers a bright flash and loud silence. He frowns. Loud silence, that's an oxymoron. Like darkness visible. Military intelligence. Heh.

“--than? I need...okay? ...alright.” His cell phone must have a bad connection. It sounds like Allison in a panic, something must be wrong at GD...

“OPEN YOUR EYES.” Nathan struggles, because that's Jack. Carter. He doesn't...he wants...everything goes black.

***

He's warm and content and so very comfortable. Awareness washes over him gently, and his dreams languidly fade into reality.

The long line of a back disappears under the covers, and it's too much of an invitation for Nathan to ignore. He drags his fingers down the raised spine, touching, enjoying. He gets a muffled grunt for his efforts.

“Hi.” Jack's face is red with pillow-creases and sleep. He hasn't opened his eyes, but there's a sleepy smile on his face. Nathan grins at him and continues to run his fingers over Jack's back. Neither of them have anywhere pressing to be today.

\---

They're both drunk and trapped in GD for another...72 hours. To be fair, they got trapped in GD and _then_ got drunk because there was nothing else for them to do.

“I had a boyfriend when I met Abby,” Jack slurs. Nathan lets that little tidbit wash over him as he drains his bottle. If he kills Jack now, he can hide the body and rig all the sensor logs so no one ever knows he did it.

“And?” Nathan asks darkly, eyes narrowed. Jack blinks, like he's lost the plot.

“And. And. And what?”

“Why did you feel the need to tell me that, Carter,” Nathan grits out.

“Oh. Oh!” Jack smiles at him, goofy and open. Nathan swallows down every tender impulse that rises up in him because Jack is being an idiot and that should not be encouraged. “They left. And you won't.”

There is a stunning lack of logic in that convoluted conclusion, but Nathan can't help feel illogically pleased, so it all works out. Jack finish his drink and sprawls over the floor, his head pillowed in Nathan's lap, an absurd little smile on his face.

\---

“I think...that one. Right there. That's my favorite star.” Jack tucks his hands beneath his head looking pleased with himself.

“That's Venus.”

“What? No, that's...but last week Venus was over there. You said...” Nathan can't help but laugh at the expression on Jack's face, somewhere between hang-dog and affronted.

“You're too easy. One day this will stop being fun,” he says between gasps. Today, needless to say, is not that day.

“You—you're _messing with me!_ ”

“I see why they made you Sheriff.”

“They made me Sheriff for other reasons.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh yeah. I know at least 320 ways to beat up the average scientist in under two minutes.” Nathan contemplates that, calculates the odds. He's off in seconds, the ground soft beneath his feet. He can hear Jack's hitching laugh behind him as he races towards the woods, both of them with madcap grins on their faces.

\---

“I'm just going up to my room, reading my magazine, not seeing or looking or—”

“We're decent, Zoë.” Jack smothers a grin as his daughter peeks around her magazine to check. She sighs and drops her shield gratefully.

“That's a relief,” Zoë says sarcastically.

“It was one time!” Jack protests. His hand slides over Nathan's thigh, out of Zoë's view.

“One time too many,” Zoë shoots back, arching an eyebrow that says they aren't getting away with anything. Nathan hides his laugh behind his glass, but Jack catches it and punches him in the arm just as he drinks. It spills all the way down his white shirt, but he finds that he doesn't care.

***

There are beeps and whirrs and he's cold. He wants the warmth back but he can't figure out where it is. He reaches to the side, searching.

“I think he's waking up. Nathan? Can you hear me?” His eyes don't want to open, he wants to go back. Back to where he was.

“Nathan?” He's never been so disappointed to see Allison in his life. “Nathan, thank God, Doctor!” Frantic footsteps everywhere, the heart monitor beeping faster, faster. He smells antiseptic.

“Blood pressures rising—Doctor Stark, please calm down. I need you to stop thrashing. Get me a sedative!”

“Nathan? Nathan, it's alright, you're alright...”

\---

No matter how hard he tries he can't find the warmth again. He feels sick and woozy and he doesn't want to open his eyes.

“Doctor Stark?” He catches the dull brown uniform of the sheriff's department, and for a second elation fills him. Then the figure leans forward and Deputy Lupo peers at him. Nathan tries to move, but his arms are tied down. “The last time you woke up you had a panic attack. They restrained you for your own good. Let me get the doctor.”

Jack watches her go, empty, trying to sort through...everything. He doesn't remember what happened, but something is missing. He just doesn't know what.

“Doctor Stark! Good to see you awake and calm. What's the last thing you remember?” Nathan doesn't know how to answer that. He stays awake long enough for the doctors to run some tests and for Allison to arrive. He waits for Jack, tries to stay up, but he's fighting a losing battle.

And Jack never shows up.

\---

He wants the dreams back. His short-term memory starts coming back around day three of being awake, he finally starts remembering the string of people who come to sit and entertain. Jack hasn't been there once.

They take shifts with him. He's suffered serious brain trauma and time tends to slip away from him. They tell him dates, but they don't have any meaning. He only knows that every time he opens his eyes its not—Zoë's been there twice when he's woken up. He thinks. She gives him watery smiles and repeats information by rote, information that sounds new to him but isn't for her: lab accident, head trauma, slight memory loss, issues with the short term but getting better.

The doctors ask him all kinds of questions—who's the president, what year is it, does his head hurt. They ask if there are holes in his memory, and Nathan snaps at them because _how should he know?_ It doesn't take him long to realize that he'd invented an entire life for himself while he'd be unconscious. He doesn't tell them about his dreams. Wouldn't do any good.

\---

They let him go on a Saturday, provided he goes straight home. He swears he will, ignores their pleas to let them call someone (who would they call?). He programs his address into his car and stares out the window as it drives him home. To his house. It looks empty from the outside. When he gets inside, it _feels_ empty and un-lived in. Cold. A bachelor workaholic's house.

The memories of coming home to Jack and Zoë and even SARAH are filled with warmth and laughter and clutter. Shirts strewn on the floor, pants left to wrinkle where the land. TV on in the background, a dip in the couch where someone had spent quite a bit of time. His house feels sterile, like the bare bones of a life have been carefully constructed around him. There's even a thin layer of dust over everything.

Nathan's upstairs wondering where his favorite pair of sleep pants, not to mention half of his work clothes, have gone when the doorbell rings. He's half tempted to ignore it, but everyone's still so worried about him. Worried because the Nathan Stark that woke up from the coma isn't the Nathan Stark that went into it. Nathan hasn't felt much like talking recently, but he's not depressed like the doctors have whispered when they thought he couldn't hear. (The doctors said a lot of things about temporary personality shifts, mood alterations and, at worse, possible undiagnosed brain damage.)

He's not prepared for Jack standing on his doorstep.

“Uh. Hi?” Jack says. Nathan blinks, tries to put the pieces of this puzzle together, but his head is starting to hurt.

“Carter.” A small crinkle appears between Carter's eyes, his _figuring things out_ expression. Nathan leans against the doorjamb and crosses his arms, making sure his face is an expressionless mask.

“What are you doing here?” Jack finally asks.

“This is my house,” Nathan points out. He wonders if Carter also suffered from a lab accident, but no. Past experience tells him this is all Carter.

“Well. Ye-es. I supposed it is. Technically.” Jack still looks confused, and now a little wary. “You know, they say you're not supposed to make any major life decision for at least a year after a traumatic incident.”

“It's three months,” Nathan corrects by rote. He still has no idea what Carter is talking about.

“I think that's one of those grey areas. Three months to a year.” They stand there uncomfortably, but Nathan can't figure out what's wrong. Carter shifts from foot to foot, eyes darting around Nathan's house.

“So—”

“Why—”

They both stop. Nathan gestures for Jack to continue, too tired to put his thoughts in order. The headache's getting unbearable.

“Why are you here? Why didn't you come home?”

Home. The word makes Nathan's legs shake, makes him remember trauma-induced falsehoods about hot nights and ridiculous laughter. Kisses and touches and snark.

“I am home,” Nathan says, but it comes out uncertain and shaky.

“You...” Jack's eye narrow on him, like they do when he's zeroing in on a wayward scientist. “Nathan, you haven't lived here for months.” He says it slowly, cautiously, like he doesn't want to startle Nathan lest he disappear.

“But it's my house. It still has my things.”

“All of your things?” Jack asks gently. Nathan thinks back to the missing sleep pants and his favorite suites. Jack maybe has a point.

“Are you missing memories?” Jack asks worriedly. “How did they miss that, that's like, the first thing that goes in this town. You'd think--”

“I thought they were fake.”

“—they would know to test what do you mean fake?”

“I thought you, it, us, was just...conjecture.” Jack is obviously not impressed with him. “You were never there,” Nathan points out in his defense. “When I woke up.” Jack's face softens a little, and there's a small flash of guilt.

“Oh. I kind of had to go to DC to convince them that we had perfectly good safety measure in effect and they didn't need to come do a complete re-haul of GD. Seeing as you were out of commission...” Nathan processes that; it takes longer than it should, but he has a head injury which means he's only smarter than 98% of the world at any given time. “I waited until you woke up, which you obviously don't remember.” Jack's face flushes with guilt.

Nathan grabs Jack by the lapels and yanks him inside. He kisses him like he wants to, like he _remembers_. It wet and sloppy, and they've definitely had better, but it's _them._ Jack pulls away, panting, eyes glazed. Nathan wants to kiss him again.

“See, this is why you shouldn't hide things from your doctor,” Jack says, staring at Nathan's lips. “If you weren't such a stubborn bastard—” Nathan kisses Jack quiet. Honestly, he's quite grateful to find out their relationship is real because this is the only effective way he'd found to shut Jack up.

“So you're, uh, coming home then?” Jack asks, a little dazed. Nathan smiles, and he doesn't say that he already is.


End file.
